Short Story

The Diary
Creeeeek. I stepped cautiously inside. I was Immediately struck with the
irony that I was entering a living room, but it was full of ghosts.

It was just as she had left it. Her knitting patiently waiting on the couch. The
distinct smell of OMO washing detergent mixed with her perfume. All of it
ignited the memories of my youth.

And then the nauseating feeling of grief and pictures from the past flooded
over me, like waves lapping at the shore. The thrill of Christmas in this
room. The twinkling tree. Playing charades. The lost days watching cricket.
But, then, like a tsunami, I was hit with the memory of that traumatising
night. The slap. The vicious shouting. And finally, the sound of the door
slamming behind Anthony for over a decade.

I was freezing cold, but that was fitting. I lit the fire and picked up the jar of
seashells that adorned the mantelpiece. Seventeen summers’ worth of
shells from Avoca. I pictured her dazzling smile, like a warm hug, under the
sunny beach umbrella.

I began writing her eulogy. I sat there for hours, sinking ever lower into an
impossible writer’s block. I was drowning. And then I saw it, sunken deep
inside the bookcase. It was her diary. It felt like a lifeline, a buried treasure
filled with her words and thoughts.

I knew, instinctively, I shouldn’t read it. But the temptation burned too brightly.

I should have known better. The words inside were nuclear. Oh, how she despised
Anthony, with a red-hot burning resentment.

A wave of despair crashed over me as I read the words. It left me spinning like a
rag doll in the surf. Page after page was filled with her fiery hatred. The words
were silent grenades.
“Hello.”

I saw his pale eyes and I was awash with panic. Those eyes glanced toward the
diary.

I threw it in the fire, and it lit up the room. “How dare you”, roared Anthony. I
was immersed in compassion and fury, in love and in hatred for the brother who I
knew would never forgive me.
 Reflection
My imaginative piece has been heavily influenced by Geraldine Brookes’ “A Home
in fiction” which cleverly uses metaphors, extended metaphors, contrast,
juxtaposition and truncated sentences to add a journalistic tone.

I have been inspired by the power of words that teach us about the past and
connect us with human emotions from times gone by. In my imaginative story the
protagonist.

Brooks comments on writing about people from the past, using a metaphor
to…..stating that “someone rises up out of the grave and begins to talk to me”.
This quote inspired me to imagine a story about someone reading their mothers
private diary after she dies, revealing the power of words to insight emotions and
teach us lessons from the past. In Brooks's work, she uses the stone/wall
metaphor to help explain the craft or writing, stating that “words are stones, and
the book is a wall” and when it comes to writing, “there can be no day without
lifting stones”. This metaphor evokes powerful imagery. Brookses uses another
metaphor, when she says “I swim in a sea of words”, and she talks about how the
words float over her. I was directly inspired by this literary device and used two
key metaphors in writing my piece. I talk about “waves of nausea lapping on the
shore” and the protagonist “washed with guilt” and how the diary was “sunken
deep in the bookcase like a buried treasure” and finally, I talk about how the diary
was “sunk deep in the bookshelf” and how it “was a buried treasure”. I also use
the extended metaphor of lighting a fire

Brooks’ use of flashbacks and anecdotes motivated me to include the

protagonist's past in my story, so I included seashells that had been collected
throughout the protagonist's childhood, as well as highlighted childhood
memories. This alludes to the seashore metaphor throughout the piece and
allows me to use imagery to paint a picture of a happy family at the beach with a
young boy looking into his mothers eyes under the shade of a sunny umbrella.
I have used short truncated sentences throughout my piece to emulate Brooks’s
journalistic style and to add an intense impassioned tone to the piece. I was also
inspired by Brookses use of contrast/compassion and juxtaposition, when she
compares herself to the mathematics lecturer, she says “when she has lungs, I
have gills” and when talking about writing, she says “consciousness is shaped by
fear and joy, hatred and tenderness.”. I utilise this device in the final sentence of
my piece, which talks about my brother's fury and compassion, love and hatred
towards his brother.

The extended use of fire metaphors is to emphasise the intensity of human

emotions when there is inter family conflict.

Decide on one main language feature you will use

Geraldine Brooks believes that facts are crucial for fiction and imaginative writing,
with facts being an inspiration for a “set of ideas from which my imaginative
edifice will grow”.

“Someone rises up out of the grave and begins to talk to me. Until they do, I do
not have a book”

“I try to use the experiences that I have had, to make the suffering I witnessed
count for something. I believe fiction matters”

Brooks utilises personal anecdotes in her discursive peace to explore the conflict
between fact and fiction, highlighting moments of epiphany and embarking on a
philosophical reflection on the importance of facts in developing fiction.

Brooks opens her piece with an anecdotal reference to an MIT maths lecture she
attended. Brooks expected to let the lecture “sail over her head” whilst
attempting to have a “discrete little nap”, but instead Brooks became engaged
with the lecturer’s earnest desire to communicate her vision and knowledge of
maths to the world.
Brook’s purpose in her discursive is to highlight the relationship between fact and
fiction, which is seen through Brooks likening the finding of a solution in maths to
the process of writing, with maths highlighting “eternal truths”.

I have used an anecdote in my piece through the character Samantha, highlighting

her belief in her parenting skills, challenging her mother’s opinion that she is bad
at parenting and disciplining her children, therefore challenging the relationship
between fact and fiction.

Feedback

Narrative: Your narrative has some promising elements and you've used
description; however, your piece needs to be longer and more complex. This will
develop a sense of character in greater depth as well as a stronger sense of the
relationship between him and his brother. More sophisticated inclusion of the
stimulus needs to be sustained throughout the piece. Reflection: Your reflection
shows a sound understanding of the influence that Brooks’ text has had on your
own piece although more depth is needed. A greater awareness of the
overarching stylistic features of the set texts and their influence on your use of
similar stylistic features is needed. Try to move away from elements like metaphor
which are too simplistic. You must also explicitly discuss how you have used the
stimulus
Power of writing – Necromancer – bringing someone back to life

Change to how people back in the day lived their life and how writing takes you
their rather than writing jogging your memories

Relates a writer to mathematician as both are creating stories – Commonality of

writing stories

All men try and make a bridge to the moon but become happy that they have
made their shack – Metaphor

Building her home through writing – Extended metaphor

 Persuasive/Discursive
When I was in Year 2, we had a schoolyard bully who terrorised the playground, prowling
around like a tiger on the loose, hunting for prey. One day he started a vicious rumour, that
Nathan had wet his pants, and it spread like wildfire around Year 2. The teachers caught the
tiger in the act, and from that day on, starting rumours or spreading them was banned at our
school. This was my first experience of being subject to a limit on free speech all in the name of
the public good.

In January 2021 Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for inciting violence in the US Capitol.
Soon after he was banned from Snapchat. Then TikTok. He was suspended from Facebook, and
finally he was taken off Instagram. These actions pulled the rug from under Trump, who was
another Tiger. The sudden ‘de-platforming’ took the loaded gun out of Trump’s hand. It helped
quell the firebomb that Trump had ignited. A fire that burned brightly underneath the pillars of
democracy itself.

While many saw this ‘de-platforming’ as the beginning of the end to Trump’s tyranny, others
saw it as an egregious infringement on the right to free speech. Powerful voices such as Elon
Musk’s have boomed through the loudspeaker and criticised the move. Musk quoted Voltaire
who once said: “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to
say it.”

So, it is worth pausing for a moment to ask the following question: by de-platforming Trump,
and thereby muzzling the dog, did this make America ‘more free’ or ‘less free’?

Any sensible discussion of freedom of speech must come to terms with the fact that free speech
is always limited, as free speech takes place where there are other competing values that must
be weighed on the scales of justice. For example, consider the right to privacy and
confidentiality agreements. What about hate speech, terrorist manifestos, or mass shootings
being livestreamed? What about suggesting at a Presidential news conference that people
might ingest bleach to combat Covid-19? And what about banning children in the playground
from spreading the rumour that Nathan wet his pants?

- Lockdowns - Freedom

Clearly, in the quest for a free and just society there are many competing values – and all of
these must be weighed on the scales of justice. When a powerful Bull dog like Trump throws
misleading grenade after grenade at the public, and when he would rather watch the house
burn down, rather than hand it over after sale, then surely it is best to muzzle the dog when the
dog is in public. People are safer, more secure, and ultimately ‘more free’ when they live in a
society that puts out fires before the firestorm. If this means de-platforming the worst
influences in society, then whatever it costs free speech is a price worth paying.

Discursive/ Pursiasive reflection

I introduced my discursive piece with a personal anecdote, of my first memory of being subject
to a ban on free speech. Similar to the way in which Brooks begins her piece, recounting her
attendance at a mathematics lecture, and her insight that the language of maths and writing
were more similar than she thought. In the opening paragraph I also used an extended
metaphor of a bully, like a tiger, hunting for prey and the analogy of a rumour spreading like
wildfire.

Free speech – Relate to stories

Free to find your own story – You have to find your story for yourself

Connecting with others and different worlds

Writing is building a wall – “Words are stones”

Plague in England where people had to isolate – voluntarily isolated – Link to COVID

Experience becomes story – Use experience to write/shape their story

Light metaphor –

Behind every beginning, no matter how long ago, there is another party – Anthony and the
diary

Bad relationship between the brothers

Crawling back – fear and trepidation